Sainz's Madrid homecoming ends in retirement after first-lap clash and double penalty

Carlos Sainz did not see the chequered flag in Madrid, the Spaniard enduring a torrid race on home soil that ended with his Williams being retired after 43 laps. If there was one weekend this year where the local hero was hoping better Williams form — and perhaps some attrition ahead — would propel him up the order, it was always going to be his home race. Instead, the new track proved no friend to the FW48 from the very start of practice, on the car's final outing before the team's upgrade package arrives in Baku.

A weekend that fell apart from qualifying

Things began to unravel for Sainz in qualifying, where he and team mate Alex Albon locked out P16 and P17, with Albon ahead. The fact that they were split by just 0.005s in Q1 suggested both men had found the absolute limit of the car — and that the machinery simply wasn't quick enough.

It got worse for Sainz when he received a three-place grid penalty for impeding Valtteri Bottas, dropping him to P20 and behind the two Cadillacs.

First-lap contact with Tsunoda ends hopes before they began

Wary of how hard overtaking was expected to be, Sainz went for it at the start — and paid the price when he made contact with the Racing Bulls of Yuki Tsunoda at Turn 1, picking up floor damage in the process.

"I had a really good start off the line," he said. "I think I got three or four positions on the hard tyre, and then a lot of bunching up into Turn 1 caught me a bit out, and I had a small contact with Tsunoda that damaged my floor.

"Unfortunately from there on, I had damage in the car, and it was a race of survival, because I had no rear downforce in the car for the rest of the race. So yeah, we had nothing to lose on that Lap 1, and I wanted to get a good start to see if we could get anything going in this race."

Alonso clash brings another penalty

A little later, Sainz got into another scrape at Turn 5, this time with his countryman Fernando Alonso, who felt he was squeezed. Having damaged his front wing, Alonso made his feelings about the incident clear on team radio — and just for good measure reminded the world, and the stewards, of Sainz's first-corner mishap. Sainz was handed a five-second penalty at his pit stop.

"Nothing to say really," Sainz noted. "It's the nature of that corner when you turn right, and I think he complained on the radio, so he managed to get me a penalty, like always. I think it's the nature of that corner, it's always going to lead to these kinds of crashes, because there's only space for one. There's not even space for two. So yeah, and you cannot keep looking in your mirror while you're turning, and doing a right/left because you need to look forward. So at one point you need to focus on your own driving line, and I don't think Fernando was alongside me or anything."

'Game over': Williams retire the damaged car

Given the floor damage and its impact on performance, the team eventually decided it wasn't worth continuing and retired the car after 43 laps.

"Just there was no downforce in the car," Sainz explained. "So I was just driving around one second off the pace with the floor damage. It was slight damage, honestly, it wasn't that big of a contact, but with these cars, the moment you lose a piece of the floor, it's game over."

He added a brutally honest assessment of Williams' underlying pace: "But in reality, even with a perfect race, we wouldn't have finished higher than 16th. So yeah, not a lot to fight for today."

The bright side: the fans

It was not what Sainz wanted for his home-town race, but on the plus side he soaked up the love of the Madrid crowd.

"Honestly, it was an amazing weekend on that front," he said. "I truly enjoyed seeing the support that we got from all the fans. Their behaviour, the support that I've caught this weekend is second to none, and I cannot thank them enough for making me feel so at home in my home.

"And I'm looking forward already to next year. As I said in many interviews, hopefully this is the last year here in Madrid that I'm fighting for P16, and from next year onwards I can fight for something more, because honestly, it's not ideal to be fighting at home for a P15, P16 all weekend."

Albon's equally frustrating Sunday

It was an equally frustrating Sunday for Albon, who at least ended up in the better of the two Williams positions — but struggled for pace throughout and came under sustained pressure from Cadillac's Sergio Perez.

"I think one of my stronger weekends, but at the same time, just super, super sketchy," said Albon. "Realistically, the pace isn't quick enough, and I think, especially on the harder tyres, we don't have the load to keep the tyre alive. So that tyre has actually got very little degradation, but it just cools down once the tread comes off the tyre. You need to keep pushing on it to keep the temps up. We don't have the grip to do it. Just the tyres get cold, basically."

Attention at Williams now turns to the upgrade package due in Baku — a package that, on the evidence of Madrid, cannot come soon enough.